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    The Walk
    The Walk
    The Walk
    Audiobook6 hours

    The Walk

    Written by Lee Goldberg

    Narrated by Luke Daniels

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    It's one minute after the Big One. Marty Slack, a TV network executive, crawls out from under his Mercedes, parked outside what once was a downtown Los Angeles warehouse, the location for a new TV show. Downtown LA is in ruins. The sky is thick with black smoke. His cell phone is dead. The freeways are rubble. The airport is demolished. Buildings lay across streets like fallen trees. It will be days before help can arrive.

    Marty has been expecting this day all his life. He's prepared. In his car are a pair of sturdy walking shoes and a backpack of food, water, and supplies. He knows there is only one thing he can do…that he must do: get home to his wife Beth, go back to their gated community on the far edge of the San Fernando Valley. All he has to do is walk. But he will quickly learn that it's not that easy.

    His dangerous, unpredictable journey home will take him through the different worlds of what was once Los Angeles. Wildfires rage out of control. Flood waters burst through collapsed dams. Natural gas explosions consume neighborhoods. Sinkholes swallow entire buildings. After-shocks rip apart the ground. Looters rampage through the streets. There's no power. No running water. No order.

    Marty Slack thinks he's prepared. He's wrong. Nothing can prepare him for this ordeal, a quest for his family and for his soul, a journey that will test the limits of his endurance and his humanity, a trek from the man he was to the man he can be…if he can survive The Walk.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJun 12, 2012
    ISBN9781455884995
    The Walk
    Author

    Lee Goldberg

    Lee Goldberg is a two-time Edgar Award and two-time Shamus Award nominee and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty novels, including Lost Hills, the Ian Ludlow trilogy (True Fiction, Killer Thriller and Fake Truth), fifteen Monk mysteries, and five internationally bestselling Fox & O'Hare books (The Heist, The Chase, The Job, The Scam, and The Pursuit) co-written with Janet Evanovich. He has also written and/or produced many TV shows, including Diagnosis Murder, SeaQuest, and Monk, and is the co-creator of the hit Hallmark movie series Mystery 101. As an international television consultant, he has advised networks and studios in Canada, France, Germany, Spain, China, Sweden, and the Netherlands on the creation, writing, and production of episodic television series. He is also co-founder of the publishing company Brash Books (www.brash-books.com) You can find more information about Lee and his work at www.leegoldberg.com

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    Reviews for The Walk

    3.5/5

    83 ratings8 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Relentlessly dark with no let up on post earthquake aftermath bleakness. Kind of like the author woke up from a nightmare and just wrote everything down.
    • 3/5
      The Walk is about one man's journey through the destroyed city of LA.

      Marty is a tv network executive and not very likeable to boot. The book opens with him cowering underneath his car as the BIG ONE rips through the city. Once the main quake is over, Marty decides he needs to walk home to get to his wife. This story is about that walk.

      I don't want to get any further into the plot, but I will say that this book reads like a TV show or miniseries. It is very easy to picture in your mind as the author describes what Marty is experiencing. The main character does develop and grow throughout the story, but in a predictable way. In my opinion, the ending was rather easy to guess, but welcome nonetheless.

      At the very end of the Kindle edition there were links to a group of books regarding Inspector Monk from the tv show. Apparently Mr. Goldberg writes these as well. He also has written for the show Diagnosis Murder. Perhaps this explains the author's ability to write so vividly? In any case, this was a good, fun read..but it's not going to blow your mind or change your view of the world.
    • 3/5
      Very engaging. Nice mix of drama and humor. A very good anti-hero who grows into a hero. Unfortunately the book jumped the shark (or jumped the tiger) at the end. Even though parts of it were fantastic, it was overall somewhat realistic in feel until the end, at which point it just became too far-fetched for me.
    • 4/5
      The Walk - Lee Goldberg ****Marty is a TV executive that finds himself as a survivor following a massive earthquake in LA. Concerned about his wife's safety he decides to attempt the walk home through all the devastation. We find Marty an extremely self centered individual, the type of high flyer that thinks mostly of his own skin. With this mindset he starts his journey determined not to be distracted by the sick and dieing. Along the way he bumps into Buck... Buck is the total opposite of Marty. A macho man who is not afraid to risk his life in order to help others. Together they make an odd team, but become more dependent on each other as the miles are eaten up. Throughout the book we are exposed to more and more of Marty's life and the events that led up to him having a successful career and his relationship with his struggling actress wife. We are able to find out what has made Marty the man he is today and also see how the disaster changes him once again as he discovers wealth and materials are not all there is to a successful life.I found this book a bit of a strange one. The first 175 pages or so were brilliantly written, often making me laugh out loud (there are some brilliant touches of humour) or bite my nails with anxiety as the duo find themselves in another dangerous scrape. I had two problems with this book that meant I couldn't bring myself to give it 5 stars. The first being the continuous dropping of place names. Occasionally it felt as if I was looking through a street atlas as we are 'treated' to nearly every street and place name that Marty comes across. I don't know if this was because I am not from the USA and unfamiliar with the locations? My other issue with the book was the extremely poor and predictable ending. In the book Marty has been struggling throughout his life to write a novel, always becoming stuck around the 138 pages, I think Lee Goldberg had the same issue with this novel. I just felt very let down at the end and guessed what was going to happen way before it should have become apparent. All in all a very good book and my first by the author. I would recommend it to others but would advise them to not get their hopes up for a satisfying ending.
    • 2/5
      Good premise and at times, the story was expertly told, but overall, only average (Goldberg's satirical novels - like My Gun Has Bullets - are better).

      The twist at the end was rubbish - real Dallas "the whole season was as a dream" stuff - and at times the character endlessly explained every thought running through his brain, which ultimately slowed the plot.

      At times this was a fun read (and at other times it was gut-wrenching), but overall, it missed the mark (well, my mark).
    • 3/5
      Not a bad little distraction. Having never traveled further west than Lancaster, PA, I found the LA descriptions and landmarks tedious at times. I don't know where these places are in relation to each other and don't really care, get on with the story.It was good to see Marty become more likable and less of a self centered jerk. His self-awareness of how like/unlike a Hollywood creation his situation was was also enjoyable.Sadly, the "big surprise" was evident from the start for anyone who's seen any "big surprise" movies in the last 15 years. It's been done before, and better, many times. Though, I must say, it was handled well and very well done. If you really weren't expecting it. Maybe I'm just jaded.
    • 4/5
      Natural disasters are the things that every PA fan’s dreams are made of. They’re realistic and possible and we’ve all imagined how we would survive ‘The Big One’ in whatever shape or form. And we’ve all seen The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and Independence Day at least once. The Walk is the story of a normal, average guy, trying to make it home to his wife after his The Big One hits – an earthquake in LA. Marty thinks he’s got it all planned out, he’s not going to be distracted from his game plan of making it home, safe and sound, to his wife on the other side of L.A. No. Matter. What. But after a chance encounter with a rough, tough, bounty hunter at a still-functioning burrito stand, things are about to change in wimpy Marty’s world. Suddenly he’s no longer the hapless network executive just trying to make it back to his wife; he’s being dragged into every survival scenario imaginable and then some. Honestly, Marty is a bit of a twat – he’s selfish, unwilling to get involved in helping others and thinks he is far above his current situation. But Marty is also a reflection of how the majority of us would react in a similar situation, scared and terrified of pooping his pants (you have to read The Walk to understand this reference!). As the story progressed, I felt a lot more sympathy towards Marty – I wouldn’t be the ultimate action hero either, and his drive to make it home is truly admirable. The Walk is written in a way that drags the reader into the ruptured, disrupted and disaster-struck LA, with terrifyingly real situations that you can completely imagine yourself encountering on such a journey. In closing, I really enjoyed The Walk – there is a twist that I guessed a fair way before it was revealed, but for me that actually added to the experience in waiting to see when the twist would be revealed.
    • 4/5
      Movie-exec Marty survives the Big One in Los Angeles and determines to walk to his home in the surrounding hills to find his wife. The devastation is almost complete: highways and airports on fire, most buildings now piles of rubble trapping the dead and dying, stunned survivors unsure of what to do or how to get help. Marty proves to be an Everyman, torn between helping people and getting trapped himself, between getting home and guilt over those he doesn't stop to aid. There are wonderful vignettes: a woman trapped in a wrecked car who doesn't understand that an earthquake has occurred and no help will be coming; a Mexican food stand still functioning and selling meals to tattered passersby; Marty desperate to find a bathroom after his stomach can no longer handle the stress, finding a secluded bush and realizing too late there's an old woman in an upper window looking down. The writing is quite good, although Marty is the only 3-dimensional character portrayed. Quite a memorable disaster tale of one man's attempt to cope.